Uriel
by luna amara
Summary: The Angel of Repentance who holds the keys to the gates of Hell, "the Lord of powerful action" Uriel personifies the Divine Purifying Fire that punishes sinners with his fiery sword. NOT for kiddies.
1. You Ever Been in a Boy Band?

URIEL

The first time she sucks his cock, they're in a changing room of a Valise boutique in Georgetown and she's wearing a diaphanous ball gown, white as snow and wrinkled enough by design that his protests are squashed promptly as soon as she grabs a handful of him through his pants and orders him to sit down on the little ledge where her bag and clothes are piled on.

"If someone comes..."

"Oh, someone WILL come all right," she whispers above his head and then her tongue erases any intelligent thought beyond making sure his comm's closed.

He's never not in control. There's a big, red warning sign flashing somewhere in his cortex. This was not part of the plan.

"You closed the damn store... so relax!" she says when she comes back up for air from swallowing his cock. "Live a little, Agent Taylor!"

Neither says anything after that, busy as they are making sure they're as quiet as humanly possible. He's not going to grow old, that much he knows, so he might as well take her advice. His fingers roll yellow tendrils of her soft hair and push her where she's more than willing to go. She's already dancing behind his closed eyelids, her white Vera Wang making the White House press corps swoon as he'll tower over her, ever watchful. The next time he'll kiss her in a hidden corner of her changing room, she'll taste of champagne and him.

The first time she noticed him standing like a vigilant salt pillar outside of her father's bedroom, she was rummaging through the White House kitchen for the secret strategic ice cream stash, wearing cotton boyshorts and an oversized Harvard t-shirt. She tried not to glance at him at all in the same way he wasn't checking out her rotund bottom as she quietly walked by, even though she'd heard the maids giggle in Spanish about how the new agent was a hot piece of ass. She had filed it under "Miscellaneous" and moved out of the big white house to go to med school the very same week. She's just as curvy and peach-colored, though perhaps less fresh faced and much more prone to being distracted by tall, handsome men in suits.

"So which one of us fucked up?"

"M'am...?"

His expression of earnest confusion exasperates her ever so slightly as he's standing in the middle of her tiny apartment.

"My life's not interesting enough to have done anything out of the ordinary, so it must be you who's been bad enough to be stuck with this shitty assignment. What did you do to piss off Barnes? Isn't babysitting me at Georgetown beneath a presidential detail hotshot?"

"The Secret Service takes life threats against the First Daughter very seriously, m'am."

She snorts with genuine amusement and gestures around the book and clothes-strewn room.

"So... what? You're going to sleep on the couch?"

"No, m'am. I will occupy the same next door apartment your old detail used to be in... As soon as my shift ends. Beyond that, I'm going to be wherever you are."

She shrugs, the meaning of "increased security" finally seeping in and spelling the end of her former agents' discreet presence in her life.

"Well, I hope you'll find Intermediate Congenital Cardiothoracic Diseases fascinating because that's where we're headed next."

Forty minutes into the lecture on congenital birth defects, he's passed a note all the way back in the last row he's occupying. "Nice baseball hat. I bet nobody can tell you're 40."

Agent Taylor's rap on her door is unmistakable in its purposefulness and its lack of actual asking for permission.

"Are you out of coffee? Flour? Tofu?"

She juts her chin upwards at him, her nose peeking from behind the flimsy chain on the unimpressive looking door.

"Routine PM inspection. I need to see the view from your window."

"Are you gonna break down the door if I don't let you in?"

"With the full might of the Treasury Department."

"I'm... with someone," she says, wholly unamused.

"Jignesh Patel, your lab partner and your only close friend at Georgetown or in the whole of DC for that matter. His father owns a small drug store in Jaipur, India, his mom raises his two younger sisters, the eldest of which collects unusual rocks. You fedex her one every time you go camping. He wants to become a pediatrician, likes KFC, hip hop and is gayer than a treefull of monkeys. May I come in now?"

Her shoulders shrug in resolute surrender as she opens the door and lets him find his way through the dark hallway.

"I hope you brought cash for pizza. Jiggy's trying to be obnoxious. He brought me a Mandy Moore DVD in which she falls madly in love with her Secret Service detail who just happens to look like the lost member of a boyband. You ever been in a boyband?"

"Do the Navy SEALS count?"

One tall, bespectacled young man jumps off the couch as soon as he sees them, a stream of blabber erupting spontaneously:

"Oh... Hi! You... you look taller without the... baseball hat. I mean... " his hand hangs in the air, hopeful and awkward "I'm Jignesh. Please don't break every bone in my hand!"

"I apologize for the interruption, Miss Ashton. I'd like to talk to you in private. It'll just be a minute."

"Am I a national security threat?"

"No, sir. But while we're here, I'm going to have to ask you to temporarily hand over the spare key Miss Ashton gave you if you have it on you. The less of those floating around, the better."

"Absolutely. I'm ready to do my best to protect Ellie."

"Thank you, sir. Are there any other spare keys aside from Mr. Pattel's?"

"Not that I know of, but keep calling him Sir and Mr. Pattel and he's gonna spray his shorts."

He heads for the kitchen window to survey the street below and Ellie hops on the small granite counter which doesn't get much use for its original purpose anyway.

"There's been a new set of letters... He's getting bolder and more hateful. He sent a picture of the outside of your building to show us how close he can get to you."

"And to mock the world's most formidable security force," she says, biting into a juicy pear.

"Your father insisted that you should not find out about any of this and that the increased security measures be kept as discreet as possible."

"So you're basically disobeying a direct order from your Commander in Chief?"

"Do you know how to shoot a gun?"

"No. That's why I've got you. Don't change the subject. You're actually telling me the President of the United States told you to keep me in the dark about this and you're refusing to?"

"Yes, that's what I'm telling you. I don't think keeping it a secret from you is going to help you take the very clear threats to your life any more seriously than you take them right now."

TBC


	2. Girls and Their Horses

He takes the night shift from there on because her daily routine involves labs and libraries and hospital shifts and not much else and that predictability is easily enough handled by someone who isn't him. The new letters about how lovely she looked coming back from the library the other night and the detailed description of her curtains and her block all seem to indicate her stalker is a nocturnal creature. Agent Taylor picks her up from the hospital at night and they drive in silence and say good night in the hallway like two good neighbors and she doesn't take the threats seriously because nothing happens.

"Do you have anything remotely edible at home?"

It's the first time she ever speaks while they patiently wait for the elevator in her building.

"It's probably too late to order something…"

"I think we can manage with whatever leftovers we can find."

It turns out to be quite the understatement as he starts raiding her kitchen cupboards and her empty fridge.

"Mac and cheese???" She bursts into an involuntary grin when he finally lets her follow the warm aroma into the kitchen. Her wet hair smells of lime and mint and tickles his nostrils when she butts in between him and the stove to check out the results of his work. "I didn't know I had mac and cheese in the house."

"You didn't. Agent Ryan has a stash of it in our kitchen. I don't think he'll mind."

She gobbles down half a bowl in a few swift moves and he declines the invitation to share, methodically peeling an orange across the counter. She watches him distracted with thoughts of how methodical he is in each and every one of his moves.

"I had an old man throwing up blood all over me today. I didn't think I'd ever get hungry again. But I have to say… way to go Martha Stewart! You cook, you can kill people with one hand tied behind your back… I have to go shopping for a ball gown tomorrow, but you probably sew like a pro too so I shouldn't even bother."

"Are you planning a trip?" he asks, his head pointing towards the world map with multiple red dots on it and French inscriptions that covers her fridge door. He'll never take a bait, she doesn't even know why she's trying to annoy him anymore. He's probably been trained for psychological warfare.

"Medicins sans Frontiers. The day my Dad is out of office, I'll just pick a point on the map and never look back. I've wanted to volunteer since before I even went to medschool, but it all went to hell when he was re-elected. The Secret Service won't give me the security clearance for jungles and small African villages."

He puts an orange wedge in his mouth and sucks on it with the same gravitas with which he deploys the presidential detail through his wrist intercom.

"You know what I just realized? When he's no longer President, I'll be free. But you'll still be there."

"I'm not trying to run away from anything."

He looks her in the eyes with the same unnerving calm that never seems to disappear from his features and she's suddenly fascinated with the last two spoonfuls of mac and cheese in her bowl.

"Would you really take a bullet for my father?"

"Yes, I would."

"Ever thought the world might be a better place if you didn't? I don't want my father dead… I just… I don't think it would much of a difference for me personally. That's an awful thing to admit to, isn't it?"

"As long as you're not conspiring to pull the trigger for the bullet I'd have to stop, you're fine with me."

"I just poured my heart out to you and confessed something I'm not terribly proud of and there's not one measly personal detail I can find out about you?"

"I'm not 40," he says and another orange wedge is popped in his mouth.

She's surprised to find absolutely no resistance on his part when she simply and with no rush moves towards him and grabs the back of his neck to lower his citrus flavored lips to her mouth.

She blinks fast, completely taken aback by his responsiveness, by his tongue gently and dutifully following hers holding welcome signs for her orange juice tasting expedition. As if all of their evenings end with him cooking dinner for her after a long workday and her raising up on her tiptoes to suck his face in gratitude, hair dripping wet on her terrycloth bathrobe, there is no sign of the flatout rejection she'd been expecting.

If he's trying to embarrass her by showing no interest in taking control and letting her wake up and wonder "What next?" then either Ellie's wrong about his intention or his psychological warfare training isn't all that because she's never stuck her tongue in a delicious treat and then stopped for fear of impropriety or embarrassment. She's not about to start now. She's determined to use the considerable height difference to her advantage so she simply rests her forehead on his chest, inhaling the addictive aroma of a man who carries a .357 Sig Sauer on him at all times, a man who showers, but hasn't done so in a few hours. Her hands rest on his sides, feeling up the texture of his black tshirt and the answer to "What next?" is fairly obvious when Ellie slowly moves her knee between his parted legs and starts rubbing her thigh against the rough seam of his jeans.

She doesn't really mind the lack of immediate reaction, she could get used to dryhumping him in the middle of her kitchen, but the dry heatwave rising from her skin makes her lose coordination and reminds her just how much she needs to be touched. But the bastard won't move, as if he's ready to sprout roots under her bamboo flooring. He won't push her away either.

Ellie lowers her small hand to find his erection straining against the fabric of his jeans. It feels as big as it is warm under her wandering fingers, the denim already heated by friction with her thigh. Her nimble hand is halfway down his boxers when she finally hears him make a sound, chuckling into her hair specifically.

"Are you going to fuck me to spite your daddy?"

"No, I'm going to fuck you because you have a big dick..." Oh, yes, she was paying attention, even before Jiggy started giggling about how there wasn't a white man in all of Georgetown who filled a pair of jeans quite so well. "... and I want to see if you know what to do with it."

It's not a lame bait thrown in his direction because cheekiness aside, she wants him and he's made her wet the first time she met him and every single night in which she's been falling asleep with images of doing precisely what her hand is doing right now and oh so much more.

"You're a bit of a bad girl, huh?" he says, his hips slowly following the rhythm of her strokes. No, not really. She's a doctor though and if she can screw some guy's brains out in a hospital closet because they're both exhausted and stressed, then she can certainly reach out and grab what she wants in her own kitchen. She's not exactly looking for a life-changing emotional connection, especially not with him.

"Tell me to be good and I'll stop," she challenges him, her thumb swiping the wet head of his cock that she can't wait to feel throbbing inside her body.

He grabs her wrist and stops her himself. This is very much his game now that he's accepted it and Ellie's more than happy to oblige, a sense of relief mixing in with the tension coiling in her body, demanding release. He pins both her wrists behind her back and nudges her towards the counter, his hips pressing into her belly. Her hands grip the granite and don't budge from where he's pinned her against the cool edge. She watches with dettached curiosity as his hands undo the chord of her bathrobe and he pushes it over her shoulders. She lets it fall down and she's suddenly unable to look at him, irrationally self-conscious about standing in front of him in nothing but her panties, given what she was doing less than a minute ago. His dark eyes find hers though and Ellie's relieved to read in them the lust of a man who's probably had sex in closets with random nonsupermodel co-workers just because and no, he doesn't think she's fat and ugly because what do you know, he likes the feel of her plump breasts that he's carefully studying at the moment.

She chuckles for the briefest of moments when he lifts her up on the counter, imagining Jiggy's reaction if she were to tell him about it the next time he makes pancakes there. She won't. He's going to be her dirty little secret, her gift from The Treasury Department or some cosmic reward for having a psycho stalking her. Now if only he'd hurry the hell up and touch her again, that would be great.

"Close your eyes!"

It never occurrs to Ellie not to trust him, not to obey, and not just because it's his job to protect every single inch of her. She doesn't feel safe around him, quite the contrary, but that's the edge in his voice that she wouldn't dream of not following blindly. She doesn't really connect the sounds she hears him make somewhere in the other side of the kitchen with what he's doing until she smells the umistakable aroma of fresh citrus juice, a milisecond before she feels it a cool droplet landing on her collarbone.

His sandpaper face will leave marks on her pale chest no matter how gente his kisses are, following the tiny droplet down her sternum until it looses its consistency and splashes into an invisible mist. He inhales deeply, nuzzling the soft patch of skin between her breasts and she realizes she's never been so ridiculously eager to please any man. She hopes she smells good to him, wants to taste good for him and Ellie would hate herself a little for her neediness and all around "What would Gloria Steinham say?" horror of wanting to please a man so much, if only she could be be bothered to care and really, once she feels a fresh squeeze of orange juice on her breast, she can anticipate not giving a damn even before his hot mouth clasps her nipple. Thinking of anything outside of the delicious sensations he brings to her body from her toes up is pretty much out of the question from there on.

She wants to somehow maneouver her bottom so she can stay on the counter and also be able to feel him between her thighs but he's not down with that strategic deployment just yet and his hands pin down her hips. Her body feels like an overstressed coil.

"Shhhh…" the air he exhales tickles her bellybutton and oh… a flash of comprehension lights up somewhere in her lust-fogged brain and she's suddenly very, very still and maleable.

She can only guess his movements because her eyes will stay closed until further instructions but the smell of oranges trickles down her stomach and she knows the flat of his tongue will follow. He kisses her belly, his teeth lightly nipping at her soft flesh and judging by the way his grip changes on her hips, she can only guess he's knelt down by now. The very idea settles somewhere in the small of her back in a renewed tingle of sensations.

This is oh so much better than anything her reptilian brain could have conjured as she was watching him suck on an orange wedge earlier and if she needed further confirmation, his tongue massaging her through her panties is there to seal the deal. With a little foresight and less modesty when she got out of the shower, she could have been that much closer to grinding her extremely wet pussy into his face.

"Nguuhhhh…"

His fingers somehow find their way into her panties and all theorizing on what could have been stops. It takes him less to rid her of the flimsy black cotton bikinis than it usually takes him to take apart his gun. She has no doubt he's learned both skills in the Navy. He noses her blonde curls and whatever insecurities she might have had about pleasing him are gone by the time she feels the tip of his tongue caress her slit and his mouth taking over her completely. As precarious as her balance up on the counter might be, she HAS to feel his buzzcut through her fingers, the feel of his short, thick hair as intoxicating as every other sensation he brings her.

"You don't even eat oranges!" Jiggy will exclaim while rummaging through her groceries. "What's with the nuclear bunker supplies?" Ellie loves him, she really does, but she doesn't have it in her to explain how the aroma alone makes her wet with the memory of her inner thighs getting flushed and raw from his prickly five o'clock stubble. Her daytime weekend habits become her nocturnal ones because the person her daytime agents guard is worlds apart from the one that bites into Agent Taylor's shoulder when he's on duty so her neighbors won't hear her moan.

"Is it true what they say about girls and their horses?"

She rolls her eyes at him as she tosses him her gloves and helmet, but screwing with his head is far more entertaining.

"I had my first orgasm when I started riding bareback. I was late, didn't have time to change properly and wasn't wearing any panties… I wasn't a very good rider either, but I never wanted to learn to do it right after that…"

He perks up immediately and she bites her full upper lip, trying to decide just how much she wants to screw with his head tonight.

"Are you wearing any now?"

"You mean they don't fit you with xray vision in your Navy special forces training?"

The locker room is also blissfully deserted at night… The best she can do is try to supress her huge mischevious grin.

"I guess you're going to have to find out for yourself, huh… You wanna see if you can measure up to the horse?"

She knows he always lets her think it's her idea, but when his arms wrap around her waist and her back hits the wall, she knows she has no intention of pretending to be in 'll eventually make it to her bed one of these nights, but for now neither of them minds being wrapped up in comforters on the living room floor. She knows she should be getting some sleep if she's to make it trhough an ER shift tomorrow, but she's busy tracing the veins in his arm with her fingertips, pausing to feel the hair on his forearms, every muscle beautifully outlined even as he's resting. Her hands drifts to his side, mapping inches of skin where she feels bruises and cuts and gashes that never really healed.

"Where did you get this?" she frowns at the semi-circular scar tissues on his sides, only half of her interest of a medical nature, mentally cataloguing how many broken ribs must have resulted underneath at one point.

"In a war that never really existed in a place where I was never really sent to… with people who didn't really die there."

There's nothing in his eyes, they're absolutely devoid of any feeling and she feels guilty for bringing it up.

"The one on my forehead I got in a bar in San Diego the night I went out to celebrate my official enlisting. Stopped a Marine jerk's Corona bottle."

His self-deprecating smirk and his fingers drawing invisible contourlines on her plump bottom make her dismiss that cloud of uneasiness, but the feeling lingers for a while until it's completely swept up in his touches and the only scars of consequences are the scratchmarks on his broad back.


	3. Anax Junius Drury

3:21 am.

She's awoken by the hard, cold texture of metal on her skin. Strong hands hold her down, aided by the handcuffs that tighten around her wrists as she tries to struggle. Her first instinct is to go rigid with fear - and, perhaps, shock - but the ER-trained doctor within her is demanding that she keep a clear mind, process... breathe. It's not too late yet, she can at least kick, scream, do anything... but she finds herself unable, or unwilling, to move. There is nothing that prevents her from screaming, but her voice appears to have abandoned her as well.

There is something cold against her chest, more than the slight breeze that blows through her bedroom. Metal. The serrated edge licks at her skin. She imagines the knife as it slices easily through the fabric of her nightgown, flawlessly cutting along the doesn't move and hears the knife being put on her bedside table with one hand while the other pulls away the shreds of her clothing, easily avoiding her bound hands.

Her bare thighs are pinned by a force that's both formidable and familiar, accompanied by the harsh, unperturbed sound of regular breathing ringing in her ears. Shivers of fear and anticipation run through her in equal waves. Blood pulses around her body at a fast pace to match the racing of her heart and she is almost - but not quite - ashamed to feel moisture between her thighs.

This probably says a hell of a lot about you... Her logical mind taunts her, but she ignores it.

Cold and precise fingertips trace the ridges of her collarbones, one at a time. She has no idea what time of the night it is. He's got time to spare. He's seen her naked every single night for the better part of the last two months, but his fascination is new and fresh.

"You're so pale."

She doesn't reply, choosing rather to bite her lip and concentrate on not arching into the light touch of calloused fingers against her.

There is a certain familiarity in his touch, a determined sense of ownership that should scare her but instead she finds comforting.

"I like pale."

A sarcastic retort of being happy to please is on the tip of her tongue, but that is quickly swallowed in a sharp gasp as he traces places on her soft skin that haven't healed yet from bearing the marks of his grip on her body, one clear message coming through even the softest of his touches: You. Are. Mine.

She does not argue.

His topographic survey of her chest is abandoned and he shifts, moving forward. Any argument she might have had is gone now as she feels the head of his penis run through the moisture at the apex of her thighs. It's a - mostly - automatic reaction as her thighs part as much as possible to allow him in. That feeling, that loss of control as she willingly and yet with no other choice gives it up and doesn't question anything about a force that shold by all canons of logic make very little sense in her situation, is forever going to be the pinacle of her erotic experiences if she lives to fuck a different guy every day of her life until she's a hundred.

The dominance in his thrusts is met with absolutely no resistance and she feels her body respond by stretching to accommodate him with ease. She's quite simply stopped trying to figure out any of the whys. Why rules or his career seem to matter squat to him, why she really isn't fucking him because it would give her dad an apoplexy, why the trail of fire each of his thrusts puts into her body is making her feel more alive than any act of petty revenge ever could.

Her parched lips can't handle the words she wants to scream, coiled under the pressure he puts in her muscles. The heavy air around them smells of sex, of them, and her glazed eyes can barely make out his face through the dark. He's intently focused on the beads of sweat trailing her body, his amber eyes clear as the light of day even as his own body is burning.

His movements don't slow when she clenches around him and there is a painful kind of pleasure associated with each thrust into her overstimulated body. He won't care, she knows it and she knows the scream that just tore from her chest wouldn't have been half as intense otherwise. His own voice is hoarse when he slumps next to her although he's as silent as the moment when he entered her room and watched her sleep. She's never felt him so light, so near her own feeling of fucking flying off the bed when they come in a mass of tangled limbs and satisfied groans and the novelty fascinates her for all of ten seconds until he releases her wrists and kisses her soundly.

"What the hell... ? Did he...?"

Her question dries up as she rolls the taste of his blood around her tongue and her fingers find the split in his lower lip and start charting his sweaty spent body for further damage. Faint bruises and scratches is all she can find.

"It's over. He's dead."

Ellie doesn't ask who and she's stopped with the whys a while ago. Some psycho followed her, his obsession cost him his life and technically she should be grateful it didn't cost hers. The End. A small irrational corner of her mind feels the loss of the danger surounding her as a curse, but she shuts it down and lets sleep claim her wrapped up in him.

12:09 am

"You are not in this by yourself, hermano."

Every muscle in his body rebels quietly against the force that's pinning his arms behind his back, but there's three of them and one of him and no need to be stupid.

"We'd never dream of belittling everything you've put on the line so far, but... we're just beginning to worry a little lately. I tried to tell them... Taylor is not the man who'd let his dick rule his head. He's got plans... He's got goals. Scoring some presidential ass is not going to get in the way of that. Agent Taylor would never do anything that stupid, would he?"

"I've already told you that she's got nothing to do with it. Perk of the job." His head motions towards the oversized brickstructure-like man currently in charge of twisting his left arm behind his back, incidentally the one who'd suckerpunched him as soon as he'd opened the door of the designated meeting spot. "If you let Gonzo here free of his leash so he could go buy some pussy on the weekends, he might get familiar with the concept." He can feel Gonzo snare unpleasantly, the stench of his anger bouncing into the back of his head. "Some of us can aspire to much better than that. It doesn't mean I've forgotten for one second what I'm doing and why."

The man standing before Agent Taylor is very similar to him in age and build and military haircut and background. It's where the similarities stop.

"It ends tonight, Taylor."

"Asking to be reassigned won't exactly win me any favors in the Service. You build trust by volunteering to be in the path of the bullet, not by politely getting out of the way."

"Then stop the bullet."

9:42 am

"The President and his family thank you for your discretion and for allowing them to move on past this incredible trying time in private. They are very grateful to the Secret Service for their professionalism and dedication and will continue to pray for the family of a troubled young man..."

"Jiggy, will you please stop freaking out?"

Ellie decides early on in this conversation that confiscating the remote and banning news channels is the only way to a semi-coherent conversation.

"But it's DANNY!!! Our study group, nerdy, gonna be a big time cardiologist like his daddy DANNY! Correction: *was* Danny... cause he apparently hung himself last night on a pile high of pictures of you from some weird altar he was building in the basement after he saw you... what? Three times in his whole life? Stop freaking out??? How can I stop freaking out? And more importantly... Why aren't YOU freaking out?"

Ellie wraps her arms around him wanting to soothe his big, generous heart.

"Ssshhh. It's OK. It's going to be OK. It's weird. But it will go away. I'm going to spend the summer with Aunt Ruth and her entire brood until the media gets out of this slow news cycle and finds something else to obsess. Judging by America's attention span, that should be no later than Thursday. I'm OK."

"OK. But Washington state???"

"I'll bring you some of Aunt Ruth's apple preserve. Either that or sweet onion pie. Fuck, it's practically right up there in Canada, I'm sure we'll find something," she laughs at the sight of her friend wrinkling his nose in disgust.

"Is Agent Hunkalicious coming with you?"

"Agent Pain in the Ass has gone back to important national security business. Agent Ryan's back. Says he missed you terribly."

"But he's bald. And has a moustache and hair coming out of his nostrils. How can you ever go back to something like that?"

Ellie bites her lip, trying very hard not to look at the oranges on the counter top and grin.

"I'm sure we'll manage somehow."

July

Her eyes are bleary with sleep, the letters starting to mingle on the pages of her diagnosis book and melt into unnatural shapes and ideas. She's fallen asleep on the porch of her aunt's stately farm house before, she can remember giving in to peaceful slumber on this very porch swing every summer for as long as she's been big enough to hold a picture book.

"Anax junius Drury. Washington State's official insect. The common green darner dragonfly."

Her eyes lift up towards its transparent emerald wings fluttering in suicidal circles around the porch lamp and her wide smile never leaves when her book thuds on the floor boards and her arms wrap around his solid frame and her legs wound around his waist.


	4. You Can't Stop the War

"I know you killed him."

Her voice is empty and matter-of-fact and her words scatters against his neck where her lips are catching up with all the skin she hasn't tasted in months.

"What…?"

Her confession is an afterthought because his tongue is busy retracing its old stomping grounds and there's this particular patch at the junction between her collarbone and her neck where suction triggers a reaction which usually ends in an undignified grunt. He wants to hear that sound again.

"Henry… my stalker. He didn't kill himself."

He doesn't miss a beat in sliding her jeans down her thighs and can't help but feel a swell of pride because neither does she and her hands are doing a fantastic job of sneaking bellow his belt. And also because she's right. She steps out of her jeans which are now in a pile on the floor with most of the rest of her clothes and nudges his hips towards the bed. She'd never felt the need to turn the lights off with him, his hands and his mouth and his hard on that she's pressing her belly against right now and many more like it leave no room for any insecurities and no doubt about what he wants and how he wants it. The lights have to stay out this time because she's in her aunt's guest bedroom and even though she's not an ingenue teenager and he's not even technically breaking any rules anymore, not that she knows of, keeping quiet after too many nights away from him is going to be challenging enough without having to worry about visibility too.

"I talked to his parents..."

If she has no problem hungrily sucking on his tongue while discussing the subject, he's not going to be the one to blink first. His big hands slide to her bottom and he grabs two handfulls, kneading the soft flesh in his outstretched palms until she hisses and unlatches her mouth from his neck.

"I love your ass," he whispers in his best naughty boy voice although the fact that he's running one finger along the crease of her bottom and follows just the right trajectory down below to where her panties are soaked is one of the more tame things he's done in that particular neighborhood. She dutifully follows his lead and lets him hoist her up on his waist, legs wrapped tightly against him, but she's not done and she will not be distracted, not even when he swerves and presses her into the wall. She's waited too long for this, both for the feeling of his taste on her tongue and the opportunity to tell him she knows just who he is. She's fairly confident she can multitask.

"I talked to his parents... I wanted them to know... I didn't hate him..." Her voice is subdued and gravely and although he's never actually told her, her older-than-her-years inflexions make him just as painfully aroused as her round ass.

She catches the reflection of his smile in the dark and knows by the look in his eyes that she's even more naked than the situation would indicate. She won't let him shame her about irrational guilt, even as his own rational one she didn't really expect is completely absent.

"They're blaming themselves, just so you know... They make my own father look like a slacker when it comes to putting pressure on the offsprings."

She wants to hurt him, wants to see him broken and bleeding. She doesn't really know what cuts him and it infuriates her more than anything. Granted, rhytmically pushing her wetness against him with the wall as leverage and rubbing her swollen breasts against his chest might not be the Geneva Convention's definition of torture, but she wants him to feel as asphyxiated and powerless as she'd felt and this is the only way she knows how to. She's never really hated anybody, but his smile triggers something that's dangerously close to loathing because she knows he's... charmed by her weakness and her guilt. He can smell it on her in the same breath in which he can smell her swollen cunt. He knows her reasoning, knows that to her it hardly seemed fair that what she'd got out of some kid's disturbed fantasy that she hadn't even allowed to sink in was wonderfully filthy, all-consumming sex while they got a dead son in a wooden box. It amuses him apparently.

"By all means... tell me more..." he cavalierly asks, not missing a beat in maneouvering her back to the ground so he can take his dick out of his pants and compensate for the height difference by grabbing one of legs and anchoring it around his hips. She realizes as long as she's not talking, as long as she's not assaulting him, he's content to just slowly swipe his thumb against the flushed dark red head of his penis she can barely make out in the darkness between their bodies and watch her pant for it. She wants to give in to the memory of its salty taste, take him by surprise and suck him off until he's aching from thrusting into her mouth. Maybe that's how she could hurt him. She won't be touched, save for the air that tickles her wet flesh bared by her awkward position.

"You missed a detail... Very unlike you."

He pushes his hips just a fraction of an inch closer and she can feel the weight of his warm cock resting in the crease of her exposed thigh.

"Plenty of regular church goers kill themselves. You want the statistics of suicides among the clergy at national level?"

What she gets instead is her nipple painfully twisted between his fingers just as he rubs his cock against her slit dragging a raw, aching trail against her sensitive flesh and he jams it up into her way too roughly, even though she's too snug against his thickness in this position, knowing she wouldn't move for the world. Since she'd rather not see her uncle barging in through the door with a baseball bat, ready to protect her, her head snaps forward and she muffles her moans in his arm, her teeth leaving angry red crescents in contrast with the green splashes of his tattooed skin.

"Did I miss anything now?"

Bastard.

He hisses and flexes the muscle underneath the skin she almost breaks, pushing her head back against the wall and his fingers curl around her throat, not menacingly but firmly. She feels his breath coming in short, rhythmic bursts down her chest as he fucks her slowly, too slowly, and without ever taking his eyes off her face.

"He would have hurt you. He wanted to do this to you," he illustrates by thrusting into her forcefully, pushing her so hard into the wall that her eyes sting with oncoming tears. "And this..." his hand lowers from her throat to her breasts and down her belly towards the junction where their bodies are united "all of it... is mine! And if any man ever hurt it... I'd kill him and fuck you on his grave."

She closes her eyes and lets her tears burn beneath her eyelids as she arches against his touch, feeling slightly disgusted with herself for needing and loving his fingers so much.

"So you strung him up from a rafter in the lab building? Did you make him climb that high ladder? Threaten him with a gun? I guess the fact that he was terrified of heights... and would rather slit his wrists than climb that high... never made it in any of your... files..."

In reality, she imagines he's far more professional than that, his victim had probably been unconscious long before he'd tied the sturdy sailor's knot. He leaves nothing to chance, there's no reason to imagine he kills any differently from the way he fucks.

She growls a desperate little pant of disappointment when he stops rubbing her clit and untangles her leg from around his waist. She's going to be sore in all sorts of places tomorrow. He takes her hand and wraps it around his cock, heat radiating from it into her palm.

"You still want me." There's no uncertainty in his voice, no question mark lingering and his eyes are as liquid and clear as ever. Even in the dark, he's still the most beautiful man she's ever seen.

She squeezes him gently, running her fingers along his flesh that's drenched in her juices, exhibit A to back up his claim.

"I'll always want you."

He grabs her hips and swiftly turns her around. He doesn't crush her face first against the wall like she'd expected, but carefully spreads her arms against it, showing her where to put her hands and her elbows for the best pressure points with mathematical precision. His palms rest against hers for a second then trail down her outstretched arms and on her back, making her skin feel too tight for her body. He caresses her bottom over the red skin he'd bruised earlier and draws her closer so he can enter her again, the new angle making her thrust impatiently against him with the renewed tension that clenches her muscles threatening to spill over any second. She feels his hairy forearm tickling the underside of her breasts as he wraps it around them in search for one of her nipples while his other hand lifts up her hair so he can lick a droplet of sweat on her neck right below her hairline. She can't see him, but she feels him on every inch of her skin and feels him thick and strong inside her and knows that is where he belongs and that she couldn't belong to anybody else. That nobody has ever wanted her enough to claim ownership of her so fully and thoroughly.

He thrusts hard into her and she pushes against him even harder, his voice ringing in her ear with his hot breath

"How does it feel? Now that you know... Accepting that you want me anyway?"

"It feels... like I'm lighter. It's... a relief," she manages to push the words against her dry throat.

Despite the wave of physical pleasure invading her body and numbing her brain to anything else, she thinks she hears the rumble of his low whisper in her ear:

"I want to remember what that's like..."

She doesn't know what happens next, doesn't remember him cleaning her up with her pyjama top and putting her to bed, but when she's woken up by his hand tickling her stomach, every sensation stored in her memory hits her at once.

"I have to go," he says, making no apologies. "I brought you something."

She turns around and realizes he's fully dressed, which means he's either good at stealth morning rituals or she was really passed out, laying on the bed next to her with a red marker and a folded piece of paper she doesn't recognize at first.

"This is going to be my last mission in the Secret Service and... what I'm going to do needs to be done."

She doesn't ask for an explanation, doesn't want to know.

"I want you to pick a point on your map..."

The rustling paper starts to become familiar and the beginning of a thought that secretly thrills her creeps into her mind.

"Then you're going to pack your bags and ask Agent Ryan to arrange a late flight to Washington tomorrow night..."

"What about..."

"You can't come with me. You're going to find instructions in your apartment when you get there."

She quietly circles around a dot on the map and hands it over to him without any further elaboration. He smirks a little and carefully folds it back, leaning over her on the bed.

"Good choice," he says, kissing her languidly.

Her palm covers his stubble (her bathroom is not exactly equipped with what he needs) and she swipes her thumb down his long nose and across his lips.

"Why are you doing this? Why am I doing this?"

"I've never stopped being at war. I couldn't, not even when I thought I did. I'm ending it now."

Agent Ryan will not answer her questions, too busy to whisk her out the backdoor of the VIP airport lounge and all she can spot are the few orderlies huddled around a CNN livefeed. By the time he parks the armoured car in front of her apartment she has no more questions left and wants no more answers. The grizzled old soldier who is there to die for her if he has too gives her a reassuring shoulder squeeze, his eyes softening when he tells her her father is fine, he's safe and will be returning home shortly with the entire nation coalesced around him after surviving a heinous terrorist conspiracy abroad. She forces a smile and nods away, thankful numbness can be interpreted as happiness and relief when all she wants to do is sit in a corner until she dies.

She reassures him one more time that she's fine and will be ready in time to wait for her father and the new national hero on the White House lounge tomorrow.

"G'night, Miss Ashton!"

"Goodnight, Agent Ryan..."

Her memory doesn't register him leaving the apartment, her eyes fixed on the map that's hanging in the kitchen where it's always been pinned, same route markers in some of the most isolated places in the world and one with a bright red circle around it.

A one way ticket waits for her on the counter under a plump orange used as a paperweight, her name and seat number etched next to the words: "Goa, India." and a small note on plain white paper underneath:

"If "always" is still always..."


End file.
